Retention marketing: successful re-engagement with a CDP
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Resources
Jun 2, 2023

Retention marketing: successful re-engagement with a CDP

Introduction

Looking to supercharge your customer retention marketing efforts by using a Customer Data Platform (CDP) in e-commerce? Then you’ve truly come to the right place. In this article, I’ll explain what a CDP is and why it can help you accelerate your growth by giving you insights into your customers’ behaviors and preferences over time. And then we’ll get into specifics about the steps for creating an effective strategy that will boost your retention rate.

What is retention marketing?

Retention marketing is the concept of keeping customers engaged over time and continuing to deliver value to them. This can include things like loyalty programs, upselling and cross-selling products, or maintaining a brand presence on social media. There are various ways you can use this kind of strategy to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction with your e-commerce services and products. The end goal is to increase retention, customer lifetime value, and profits you make on your existing customers.

How does it differ from customer acquisition?

Customer acquisition is when you draw in new customers, whereas retention marketing focuses on keeping the current ones happy with their experience. The two often go hand-in-hand. Acquiring more customers will help improve your product offering and make it easier for you to retain them. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive strategies. You can focus on both areas at once so that every interaction with a potential buyer leads them closer to becoming an actual paying customer who loves everything about what you have done for them!

Retention marketing defined

Retention marketing is a sales and marketing strategy that focuses on customer retention. The main goal of this practice is to increase customer loyalty, which will lead to increased revenue for your business. Retention marketing usually consists of nurturing customers via email, in-app messages, push notifications, targeted ads, and text messages to keep them engaged with your brand. Another important aspect of retention marketing is identifying lapsed or potentially churning customers so you can bring them back into the fold by offering them new incentives or discounts.

If you are able to reach them when their propensity to buy is high, you might have a spicy recipe for great success.

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Why you should care about retention marketing

Retention marketing is a strategy that helps you retain customers and increase revenue. In other words, it can help you reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value (CLV) and profitability in your e-commerce.

Why should you care about retention marketing? Because it can help you reduce costs by retaining customers instead of losing them to competitors or churning out of the business. In fact, it costs 5 times more to acquire new customers compared to retaining current ones.

Retention marketing is an important part of any modern digital strategy. It’s not just about getting more customers into the shop. It is also keeping them there longer than they would be otherwise. When done correctly, retention marketing can be a powerful tool for increasing revenue and reducing costs, which will ultimately lead to higher profits for your business!

Measuring Your Retention Rate

The retention rate is a measurement of customer loyalty. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of customers who return to a business after some period of time by the total number of customers. For example, if you have 100 customers and 50% come back in six months, your retention rate is 50%.

To calculate your company’s customer retention rate:

  • Calculate how many new customers are acquired during this period (A).
  • Subtract this from the total number of customers at the end of that period (B).
  • Then divide A with B to get your customer attrition rate (C).

For example, You have 100 customers at the start, but only 80 remain after six months—so A = 80. Your business loses 20% of its base in six months—so B = 80%. Your attrition rate is 20%: C = 80/100 = 0.8

The 5 stages of e-commerce retention marketing

Inbound marketing is the first stage of the lifecycle, and it focuses on capturing customers through marketing.

Consideration marketing occurs when a prospect has become aware of your brand and is actively considering products buying from you.

Conversion marketing happens when the prospect becomes a customer by making a purchase. In this stage, you want to focus on getting them through the checkout process and making sure they receive the products they bought from you right away.

Retention marketing comes next in the CDP lifecycle. Retaining customers means that they’re sticking around—and depending on your industry, this may be all that matters! Marketing efforts during this stage should focus on getting existing customers engaged with your products again after having already made a purchase.


Growth marketing is about helping existing customers continue purchasing from you over time by introducing new products or services at just-in-time moments in their journey with your company. Outbound strategies are also helpful here because customers who aren’t ready yet but might be someday can still be reached by sending emails containing things like newsletters containing relevant content from other sources as well as discounts for specific items.

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A CDP accelerates your retention marketing efforts

A customer data platform (CDP) is an essential tool for retention marketing. It provides you with the sophisticated technology and flexibility you need to gather and analyze customer data. That information is what you need to improve your retention marketing efforts.

A successful retention campaign begins with a personalized customer experience. A CDP allows you to build a detailed profile of each of your customers by tracking their behavior across multiple channels so that you can communicate with them more effectively. The more channels your e-commerce business uses the greater value there is in using an intelligent CDP like Custimy in order to have the full picture of your customer’s behavior.

Your e-commerce will grow over time as well, which makes it critical for the architecture of your system for gathering customer data to be flexible and scalable enough that it can grow with you as well. Having all of your customer, product, and marketing data stored in one place ensures better coordination between teams. This also means being able to access relevant information quickly to make decisions faster and smarter than your competitors.

CDP can help you supercharge your customer retention marketing efforts.


A Customer Data Platform (CDP) is a powerful tool for understanding your customer base and creating personalized marketing campaigns.

  • Use a CDP to understand your customers
  • Use a CDP to understand your customers’ needs
  • Use a CDP to create a personalized marketing campaign that is relevant to the needs of each individual customer

If you understand your customers, and their needs you will be able to predict when they are most likely to buy again. In Custimy, customer insights will tell you the propensity of a customer to be ready to buy. You can use this to target customers with the right product, at the right time, on the right channel. This way you can supercharge your relevance to them. Your ads will not feel like ads but like help to them. It will create loyalty and customer love, as they get the feeling that you love them.

That is how you increase your customer lifetime value, retention rate, and profits. Never again lose another customer because you didn’t act when they were ready to buy.

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Conclusion

Regardless of your company’s stage, retention marketing can help you boost customer loyalty and drive more revenue. The key is to identify the best ways to engage with your customers and keep them coming back for more. Make sure you have a clear strategy and that your team members know their roles in this process. Take action today!